From Keith Ellison to Barack Obama

Tom Bevan expresses puzzlement over a passage of the keynote speech given by Minnesota Fifth District Rep. Keith Ellison at the Muslim Youth Leadership Symposium this past weekend in Illinois. According to a report of his speech, Ellison touted the virtues of Islamic illumination for an enlightened understanding of current events:

Ellison went on to say if more people knew of what Islam had to teach, the controversy created by statements from presidential candidate Barack Obama’s former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, might not have occurred.

Without more in the way of a direct quotation, it would be imprudent to make too much of this passage. But it’s interesting to see Ellison speaking on events related to the Obama campaign. In “Louis Farrakhan’s first Congressman,” I took a look at Ellison’s troubling public record and past associations before his election to Congress. Ellison’s record and associations previewed similar issues that have begun to emerge in the course of Obama’s campaign.